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'Spanish tenor Placido Domingo and Doctor Who's Matt Smith are some of the highlights of this year's BBC Proms, which has just announced its line-up.

ITV lunchtime news presenter Katie Derham is leaving the channel to host some of the Proms coverage on BBC Two.

Other highlights of this year's season include Stephen Fry introducing a complete performance of Wagner's opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg , starring Bryn Terfel; Jamie Cullum performing in concert; and a celebration of US composer Stephen Sondheim in honour of his 80th birthday.'

"I earnestly hope it may never be necessary to remind the B.B.C. that the perpetuation of the name of Henry Wood in connection with 'The Proms' should be regarded as a sacred trust." (Joe Batten, 1955)

Antoine, both your points are well made. But this is not about the merits of Doctor Who or whether novelty Proms get kids to listen to an orchestra. Nor is it about the merits of the music of Richard Rodgers whose scores for the Victory at Sea TV series sparked my interest in orchestral music in the 1950s.

In fact it suits BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright and his magic circle if this becomes an argument about ‘dumbing down’ or about whether Doctor Who should feature at the Proms. It suits him because it deflects attention away from the following much more important points:

BBC Radio 3 is not funded to promote live concerts for children or adults. It is funded to provide a quality arts programming network for UK license payers. By any criteria, objective or subjective, it is failing to do this – see data below. This failure is being hidden by an increasingly frantic smoke and mirrors routine of which the Proms and Doctor Who events are part.

The UK has a perfectly acceptable popular classical format station in Classic FM. It does not need another one, especially one funded by a poll tax on UK residents. BBC Radio 3 does not have a mandate to re-invent itself as another Classic FM complete with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim etc. just as the BBC does not have a mandate to buy publishers such as Lonely Planet Guides nor become an online newspaper with its website. What it does have is a toothless BBC Trust that is allowing this to happen.

All that not withstanding the BBC has its own network, BBC Radio 2, which caters perfectly well for fans of Jamie Cullum and similar music. Classic FM and Radio 2 are between them covering the bases. So why does BBC Radio 3 need to replicate this repertoire?

The classical music community, not just the BBC, really needs to sit down and come up with some hard facts as to whether the never ending series of gimmicks is actually attracting new audiences. So far there appears to be no factual support for this at all.

My statement is based on empirical data in the form of the official RAJAR figures for UK radio audiences. The latest RAJAR data shows that in Q4 ending December 2009 1.874 million people listened to BBC Radio 3 for on average 5.8 hours. In the same quarter in 2008 1.981 million listened for 6.4 hours, while in 2007 1.950 million listened for 6.1 hours. In Q4 2009 Classic FM had 5.134m listeners listening for an average of 6.8 hours.

http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

So despite gimmick after gimmick BBC Radio 3’s audience is declining and is now 37% of Classic FM’s. Coincidentally along the way it has lost many longstanding listeners including me. So much for the Doctor Who effect.

Is this the institution that premiered "The Mask of Time" all those years ago, or put on "The Mask of Orpheus" last year? There are some attractive events this year, but the only one that promises extraordinary to me is Rattle's period Tristan. This is the most sophisticated audience in the world, they shouldn't waste it.

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